Fine thing! I often complain that very few people post comments about the daily crosswords. Today someone does -- and then says "Never mind." That's okay, though. I hope Vince will be a frequent contributor here, and his post gives me an opportunity to write about the Chronicle Of Higher Education, a newspaper published 43 times a year for college and university instructors and administrators. (It's published biweekly during the summer months.) Online, the Chronicle is published every weekday and offers news, discussion forums and job listings. The website is

"It won't take much, in a way" is TREY, which is a playing card with three pips. No, that is not a reference to Gladys Knight's old singing group. In this case, a pip is a diamond, heart, club or spade. The word came from the Latin trēs and the Old French treis, which meant "three."

The I Ching, also known as Yijing -- the words mean "Classic of Changes" or "Book of Changes" -- is an ancient Chinese text dating from the 9th century BC. (Memo to young people: A "text" was something written, not sent via a cell phone.) The I Ching is one of the "Five Classics," the fundamental books of Confucianism. Random numbers were obtained by casting lots, throwing coins or throwing six-pointed objects known as hexagrams. The sequence of numbers could then be looked up in the I Ching, which was believed to offer guidance in matters of life, religion, philosophy, morality and other subjects. "I Ching" is also the title of today's crossword by Jeffrey Wechsler. Six phrases are altered by the addition of CHING:

Country club mentors? TEACHINGCADDIESLate-shift laundry job? EVENINGSTARCHINGJob for the philharmonic's publicist? ORCHESTRAPITCHINGSign over a woodcarver's shop? NOTCHINGFORSALECrowding on the barbecue grill? HAMBURGERBUNCHINGMarriage of theater performers? BROADWAYHITCHING

The "evening star" is the planet Venus when it appears in the west (the evening sky) after sunset. In Greek mythology, the evening star was personified as Hesperus, son of the dawn goddess Eos.

STRATA is "Rock bands" -- a clever clue. "Very, in Mannheim" is SEHR -- not used in English. "One changing hotels, perhaps" is REPACKER -- an awkward word. "Half a drum" is TOM -- an awkward answer. A tom-tom is a medium-sized cylindrical drum first used in the 17th century in Africa and later by Native Americans. The drum was originally called tam tam in Hindi and tamatama in Telugu, reflecting the sound made by someone beating on the drum with his hands.

"'A kind of library, perhaps,' to Borges" is PARADISE. Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian author, poet and essayist. In his 1941 essay La Biblioteca de Babel (The Library of Babel), he wrote, "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." A detailed biography and analysis of his works is on the Poetry Foundation webiste:

A public apology to WSJ and Mark Danna, his assistant who did reply to me almost right away to my submission in March. I missed the response in my e-mail somehow and now I have made a public outcry about their long wait times! It was erroneous, unnecessary and totally unwarranted. My apologies.

As a child, James Sajdak developed an interest in crossword puzzles by watching his father solve each day's Chicago Daily News crossword. Sajdak earned a degree in linguistics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and began teaching ESL classes (English as a Second Language). He began creating his own puzzles in 2005 and they have been published in the New York Sun, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. When he comes up with a clever theme, he often comes to the Cruciverb.com site to see if the idea has been used by anyone else. The theme of Sajdak's crossword today is BOTTOMSUP ("Toaster's words"). "Bottoms up" is the way four pairs of words are to be read:

ARRESTPLACES

"Literally, books": PLACES UNDER ARREST

OATHLIES

"Literally, commits perjury": LIES UNDER OATH

FOOTGETS

"Literally, forms an obstruction": GETS UNDERFOOT

THEBUSTHROWS

"Literally, sacrifices to save one's own neck": THROWS UNDER THE BUS

"Bottoms up!" is an American idiom. The Cambridge Dictionary says the words are "sometimes said by people in a friendly way just before drinking an alcoholic drink together." Some sources say the expression is a direction to drink the entire beverage at once, in which case the empty glass could be set back down with the "bottom up." I tend to doubt that explanation -- but I question why the "Bottoms up!" phrase is even necessary. No one can lift just the bottom of a glass. One either lifts the entire glass.....or lets it sit on the table.

"Physicist's proposed particle" is AXION. Wikipedia describes the axion as "a hypothetical elementary particle postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics. If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component ofcold dark matter." Well, that certainly clarifies things!

"Beantown landmark, with 'the'" is PRU. The Prudential Center, colloquially known as the Pru, opened in 1964 in Boston and covers 23 acres. It includes a shopping mall, restaurants, offices, a convention center and the Prudential Tower, a 52-story skyscraper which is one of the headquarters of Prudential Financial (formerly Prudential Insurance Company). When the 749-foot Tower opened, it was the second-tallest building in the world, behind the 1,249-foot-tall Empire State Building in New York City. Now, in 2016, the Empire State Building is only the 30th-tallest building and the Prudential Tower is not even among the 130 tallest! The world's tallest building is now the 2,717-foot, 163-story Burj Khlifa ("Khalifa Tower") in Dubai: